Young couple’s Big Lake home burns to ground

A young couple got a phone call Saturday night that no one ever wants to receive.

“Your house is all burnt down,” their neighbour Margaret Berringer told them, standing shivering in her pyjamas on Prospect Road, surrounded by about 10 fire trucks.

The couple’s Hermann Drive home, located off Big Lake Drive in the community of Big Lake, was demolished by fire Saturday night.

Moments after receiving the news, the frantic couple, who were reportedly visiting friends nearby, arrived and bolted past the fire scene tape and down the road to survey the smoking wreckage.

“I’m sick. I’m sick to my stomach,” said Berringer, who noticed the fire from her house and went outside to see exactly where it was.

Halifax Regional Fire division 2 commander Leonard McNabb said the cause of the blaze isn’t yet known, but the house was already “pretty much destroyed” by the time fire crews arrived.

“Firefighters arrived on the scene to find a fully involved house, three-quarters gone,” he said.

“There was a wall, maybe a wall and a half still standing. We applied water, but the house will be a complete write-off.”

Fire trucks were called to the scene around 6:45 p.m.

Seventeen-year-old Matthew Duffy, from nearby McGraths Cove, spotted the flames as he was driving down Prospect Road and called 911.

He said fire trucks were on the scene within minutes.

“I was driving home and all the trees here by the cemetery were all glowing,” Duffy said. “I’d say the flames were like a hundred foot. It was crazy. It was pretty freaky, that’s for sure. I couldn’t believe it when I first seen it.”

McNabb said no one was home when the fire in the 1.5-storey house began.

Investigators will be on the scene Sunday to try to determine the cause of the blaze.